Introducing Answer Bot

Customers should be able to choose the path of least resistance, the one that gets them from point A to B the fastest. This means being able to solve a problem quickly and ideally all on their own. Forrester found that 76 percent of customers prefer to find their own answers as opposed to speaking with a support agent.

Today, we’re releasing a new way for customers to find the answers they seek even faster – introducing Answer Bot.

Answer Bot is built into Zendesk Guide and uses machine learning to respond to customer questions with content from your knowledge base. As the tickets come in, Answer Bot learns which help article is best suited to answer specific questions. It’s designed to provide answers to simple support inquiries, like those concerning product specs, order statuses, and subscription changes.

By replying with an answer to uncomplicated questions in a matter of seconds, Answer Bot can resolve a ticket before it reaches an agent. This saves agents from being bogged down with common inquiries and customer service teams can focus more on complex support issues that take extra time and care.

“We’ve learned that customers don’t want to wait for a response. They would rather find the answers themselves.”

Dollar Shave Club joined as part of the Early Access Program for Answer Bot. Over the course of the program, Answer Bot resolved a monthly average of 4,500 tickets and successfully deflected 10% of their total ticket volume. “We’ve learned that customers don’t want to wait for a response,” Analytics Manager of Member Services Brian Crumpley said. “They would rather find the answers themselves. Answer Bot has been great for us to offer a simple way for our customers to find the answers they need.”

Answer Bot is designed to make self-service effortless for your customers, and it can help:

Make your knowledge base articles known
It can be frustrating to invest in and build out a knowledge base, only to have the articles go undiscovered. Answer Bot brings those existing articles to the surface for customers that need it.

Improve overall average response times
While customers have many options to reach out for support, email still reigns supreme with majority of support tickets still coming from email. Customers in the Early Access Program saw a significant improvement in their email response and average resolution times.

Scale and grow business
Answer Bot can answer commonly asked questions, acting as an additional support agent on your team. For fast-growing startups with small support teams, it can help them scale and tackle higher volumes of tickets while reducing overall resolution time.

Add machine learning to your company, no matter if it’s a small startup or large enterprise
Many businesses don’t have the resources or large datasets that’s needed to develop in-house machine learning capabilities. Answer Bot’s deep learning model (trained on 12 million customer interactions) allows companies of any size to get started with Answer Bot right away.